Carmel sent a letter to Noreen Moriarty, care of the post office, requesting it not be delivered to the house.
Mammy.
All’s well here. I am in London and settled. Here is my address. The baby is gone.
Carmel.
She did not write one to Eddie. How could she when she had lost their child through her badness?
5 ∼ Meeting with the End
CONSTANCE TRAPWELL had advanced in the world, though not in her chosen profession.
Carmel, hidden now entirely under the beat of Constance’s wing, had moved with Constance to a small but tastefully appointed place of residence in Shepherd Market, W1, a stone’s throw and a far cry from Soho. It was a place where the more select women paid court to the more select gentlemen.
‘It’s an honour to be here,’ Constance reminded Carmel. ‘Two girls from the bog, one posh accent between them. Strap me up.’
Constance would write letters for Carmel, which went unanswered. Still Carmel would ask her to write and she would watch as her words were put on to the page, as if a miracle was happening.
Once or twice the mistress had to take Carmel to task for answering the door to the men barefoot.
‘Giving them the wrong impression altogether, Carmel, with those big feet of yours. Keep your shoes on and your mouth shut and we’ll all be happy.’
The stairs were no longer grey and uncovered – they were carpeted with a plush pile that cushioned the well-heeled from the world and made their coming and going noiseless.
Carmel did everything but wash Constance and feed her. Since neither could cook they were often seen in Soho cafés, Carmel lighting Constance’s cigarettes, playing with the pearl lighter, passing her hand through the hot and single flame until Constance grew impatient and snatched it from her. Then nothing to do but listen to Constance’s endless talk of the same things.
‘I’m earning more than I would in any show, Carmel. Most showgirls do what I do for nothing but a dinner and a bottle. By the time I start withering I’ll have enough put by not to worry.’
‘I’d like to go home then,’ Carmel whispered.
‘What’s home got for us? A priest to tell us where we went wrong and a town to talk about us? If they don’t pity you they’ll hate you, Carmel. No, we’re done with that and that’s done with us.’
Constance and Carmel had spent many nights like this. Now one was thirty and the other nineteen. It still rankled with Constance that Carmel had never once thanked her.
Carmel was younger than her mistress, but not as well decked out. She dressed in Constance cast-offs as before she had dressed in Noreen’s. A dress of her own was a world and a dream away.
That was not what she was thinking when she felt a pair of eyes on her, brown eyes with long fringed lashes. Eyes of the man who might have been my father.
Gomez was at another table, drinking strong black coffee, waiting for his shift at the restaurant to begin. He was a dishwasher who insisted on being a paying customer before he put his apron on. That was his pride. A pride I inherited, if it is his blood in me.
Carmel was thinking about putting her hand over Constance’s endlessly moving mouth. But this time Carmel felt the eyes and the eyes said: ‘Look at me.’
When she did she was lost, for she recognized the look and felt she had returned home in it. It was only later, when things were different, that she realized. The eyes that Gomez had cast on her had been those of Joseph Moriarty, an expression in them that stood for a hatred of the world and all those in it who had stood against him.
Gomez came across to their table and introduced himself. Carmel’s face came alive and something in Constance’s heart said they had met with the end.
* * *
Carmel, now, could have all that she had not had before. She stood in the dress shop, afraid to touch anything.
‘You have to look, to try on, otherwise no point,’ Gomez said impatiently.
She had always accompanied Constance into dress shops, had never been the one to choose. Now colours and fabrics and styles surrounded her. The clothes called out, ‘Choose me!’
And since she thought she would never have another chance to choose she chewed her lip and could not decide.
‘OK, I help.’ Gomez walked through the rails and took up five dresses, held them against her milky skin and sighed.
‘Such a woman. My woman will be beautiful in these.’
He ran his hands over her to judge a size he already knew. It was a Monday morning and the shop was deserted. A bored assistant came across to them to see if they wanted anything.
‘No help,’ Gomez dismissed her with a look that was long.
The assistant put the counter between them and did not appear bored any more. She looked at the door, hoping and waiting for other customers to come in.
‘Carmen, change now into these.’ Gomez had taken to calling her Carmen.
He held up three, all blue, and he gave them to her and she had not chosen any of them.
In the empty changing room Carmel looked in the mirror and saw nothing but the midnight blue satin she was covered in.
‘It’s like wearing the sky!’ she whispered.
‘Ready?’
Gomez parted the curtains and saw a slight woman with full breasts whose beauty had been hidden under hand-me-downs. Exposed now. A beauty he wanted in front of those mirrors. He walked up to the assistant and gave her a pound note to keep everyone out. She put the pound in her purse and the closed sign on the door. Gomez went in to Carmel and closed the curtains behind him. Carmel was not looking at him, but at the sky around her. He lifted the starched skirt, his hands on creamy thighs and buttocks.
‘My Carmen.’
She was cold to the touch and this was what he liked about her. Being inside her was like swimming in a night sea. With the hot ones you learned everything quickly – with the cold ones you would never be satisfied. A secretive woman.
‘Mine,’ he said, pulling the neckline of sky away to expose a breast.
Carmel looked in the mirror. She did not feel any of his touch until he placed his fingers on each breast and twisted the nipples hard so that she whimpered and then he emptied into her and took his tissue from his pocket and wiped her and himself before zipping up.
‘We don’t take this one,’ Gomez said.
Carmel did not smile and took it off and stood naked in front of the mirrors without the sky around her.
‘We take another,’ Gomez said. ‘This one is used.’
He picked a turquoise blue.
‘You got to wear underwear now,’ Gomez reminded her, for she often didn’t. ‘You in London now.’
He paid the assistant and the assistant thanked them both for their custom and snapped shut the till before going back to a magazine which told her all about the violet eyes of Elizabeth Taylor, and how to get them with new eye drops. She avoided the green eyes of Carmel and the brown eyes of Gomez.
* * *
Carmen. Gomez gave her things, new bright things that she had never had. Her hair was cut in the latest style, her nails were polished and her feet were dressed in pointed shoes that cut them to ribbons. She did not know if she needed or wanted them but everyone else who had these things seemed happy.
All she had to do was give little and Gomez knew how to do things well. But he could not reach beyond her skin. When he was inside her, her eyes looked for Eddie’s.
* * *
Constance Trapwell’s successful business was going downhill. It was nothing to do with her technique going stale. But her clients were always somehow dissatisfied.
She could look no further than Carmel. It didn’t do to have a better-looking maid. Nothing personal, lovie, but you’ll have to move on to where you’re going quicker. Remember what I said. He’s trouble. Bye now. Call anytime.
And once more Carmel was on the street with a suitcase. Gomez was waiting.
6 ∼ Professional Love
NO LOVING was in store
for Carmel Moriarty, though it had begun well enough. When she had turned up on his doorstep Gomez had moved Carmel into his attic flat in Brewer Street without a word.
Was she comfortable enough? Did she need any more clothes? Shoes?
Over the days they bought more new bright things and then they went straight back home. No more dinners or going to the pictures.
A bed and a wardrobe in one room; a bathroom in another; a stove, table and two chairs in the kitchen; blood-red linoleum and pale green painted walls with the marks of all the lives that had lived here. This was home.
Carmel looked at the sky through a sealed skylight window, a sky so close to her now but no longer familiar. They were strangers to one another.
Gomez brought a friend, a much brighter woman than Carmel, to help her with make-up. The friend used to work in theatre. She knew how to put a bit of slap on still, she told Carmel who did not utter a sound, who watched as a brush whispered against her skin. Her paleness was painted in and her lips smeared with a rich gloss that spoke loudly.
When the friend departed Gomez spread some receipts out on the table.
‘It is so expensive to keep a woman. See. You cost me twenty-three pounds and six shillings, for new dresses, for shoes, for make-up. You wear underwear now. I pay for that. I pay for everything. I take extra hours at the restaurant. I don’t mind because you are a beautiful lady. You are mine.’
Carmel sat looking in the cracked mirror, which Gomez used to shave in. The results of the bright woman’s painting were plain to see – she had coloured in the memories, brought fresh blue bruises to the eyes, made the blood pour from Carmel’s lips as before. The sky was closed out and Joseph’s hands were raised over her. Burn Carmel. Burn in Hell.
‘Carmen,’ Gomez was standing over her. ‘What you do for me, now?’
She did not answer and he punched her neatly in the abdomen, not touching the face that was the picture of Carmel’s memories, brought to life once more with paint and with powder.
She lay on the floor gasping like a fish on dry land, seeing the sky she had lost so clearly now. The clouds parted to reveal the blue that was not hers any longer. The colour in her skin drained, leave the paintwork set against white. She pulled in breath because that is what a body does.
Gomez bent down and whispered quietly in her ear, ‘You do what I say, Carmen, and I say I don’t wash dishes no more.’
He had the first man on top of her three hours later. He was old and he worked long hours at a factory and would die of lung failure in a short time and he was lonely without his wife and needed company. He was kind to Carmel and he sobbed as he pushed into her and he wheezed loudly and the mucus in his chest rattled as he called another woman’s name over and over. And Carmel, now Carmen, put her arms around his neck when he had done and he said, thank you, pet. He would come again and again to her, spending his overtime and his savings, which should have been passed on to children, but he’d had none. He would come again and again because of the way she would pull him against her at the end. He did not realize that she held him on her breast so she could see the lost sky.
* * *
Three years later, Carmen was no longer special. She was one of many. Most found her cold, too cold. Long after they had left her bed they felt they would never be warm.
Three years later in the dead of night she woke and saw Gomez beside her. He did not call so often now as he had other girls. When he felt a bad wanting he would come to her, because she was still cold to him. The other women moaned but Carmen did not utter a sound.
‘Carmen. My best girl. You give professional love.’
He would give her a lot to drink. She liked a lot to drink. Everyday. But it did not change anything except her eyes, which lost their stare and swam in a listless sea.
She could not feel the child growing inside the same way she could not feel the men who entered her. Nothing made her warm in life. But dreams protected her as her belly swelled. In them, she held me through her skin and spoke softly to me of the crib that Eddie was building. She saw him planning it. Telling her the walnut and rosewood was worth the price: ‘Nothing but the best for our baby.’
He told her how he had searched for the right nails, copper, because he was not a real carpenter and could not make dowels, join or turn wood. But he was a neat worker and he would make this like it had just unfolded, for their child.
‘Like a fairy cot, Carmel, it will be. The child will sleep sound in it,’ Eddie promised.
She did not admonish him for the time spent on it, only she wished he would look at her, as he had always looked, as if he could not get enough of her and would be happy to die trying. She was happy just to have him near when she was cold. The cold even caught her in sleep. Him being close by, though preoccupied, drove the cold away.
‘Don’t worry about the cold now, Carmel. The baby is growing too fast for you to keep up with it. You sleep and let nature take away your weariness,’ Eddie spoke gently but all his attention was turned on the work.
‘Sometimes, Eddie,’ Carmel put her hands on his shoulders, bent over the task, ‘I wish we could live in a place always sunny.’
‘When the baby is born it will be always sunny,’ Eddie promised.
And Carmel smiled at that.
* * *
It had been too late when Gomez realized, and it had gone badly for her when he did.
‘You make them wear a johnny,’ he shouted, ‘or they don’t do it.’
Carmen did not know who was with her or what they were wearing most times.
Now she was seven months pregnant and Gomez had told her she would work until the end because they would not take her now down the back lanes, as she was so far gone.
‘Some men like this. They pay more.’
Nothing had been said about what would happen after the child’s birth. But it would not be Carmel’s decision.
She did not know if the child was Gomez’s and he would not have claimed it anyway.
Hundreds of men had put into her. One had a disease and Gomez found her a good doctor to put her right. He also found the man and put him in hospital.
‘My girls are not dirty.’
He looked after them all. They had things to wear and places to go. But no money of their own. Gomez was with them when they shopped and when they went to parties to meet new men. Gomez was always there.
She lay beside him now, listening to the night sounds of women doing their job with men on floors below her. She watched the lost sky and counted the stars that were framed by her window. Carmen was a woman who did not deserve the stars now. Eddie was a long memory away. But she went to the place where they had once been and she knew that once there had been heat in her and fire and she wished for it now, for she was frozen.
The small of her back ached from the shape of the bed and the weight of the men. She wanted to get up; she had not been up all day and all night. It was coming up to Christmas. It was busy.
She tried for sleep because Eddie always arrived with the crib soon after it. But the day’s work had taken up too much of the night for that. She got up but she could not get away. Gomez’s breathing was deep but if she made to leave this room he would be awake and asking her to wait for him. She never left the place alone. She never received visitors. The letters to her mother had stopped, with no one to write them.
His cigarettes and matches were beside the bed. She took them and went to light one for herself, curling up against the cold on an armchair. The bottle of spirits was almost empty. She drank what was left.
Even in sleep he did not appear vulnerable. His mouth was hard set, and his jaw clenched. What he had asked her to do that night she did in order to end things quickly.
‘This way does not harm the baby. This is my place.’
She was in pain, bleeding. The cold light of morning near. The child in her rested quietly, but even when it moved she did not feel it. By day it was the child of Gomez. There was no joy in its growth, only
a reminder of another child lost.
The voices grew. Burn Carmen Moriarty. Burn the badness out. Fire to keep warm by.
She looked out at the sky and at that precise moment it opened and released a powerful shower of rain, which rattled loudly and came through the leaking places in her roof. Gomez stirred and did not wake, but fell into a heavier sleep, brought on by the drum of the night rain. The baby kicked hard and sharp against her left side. She put out her cigarette.
She took the clothes, which had been bought for her, from the wardrobe and placed them in a pile at the foot of the bed. The room was small, its function did not require much space and space was much in demand in the Soho of my mother’s day. The match light was crisp and clean. She held it until it burned her fingers, could not feel anything. Another.
Then the whole box. She rested it on the clothes and knelt. The flames took hold quickly and licked through the colour and form of her soft chains.
She spread her hands and smiled at the sudden warmth. It grew now and it was as if the fire had pierced her veins and ran through them. Carmel had known it would, had known this was the way to come alive again. The voices in her formed song and chorus as the flames journeyed.
If Gomez had felt a hand on him or heard a noise he would have woken. But the flame is soft and silent and does not announce its presence. The fire crept like a great cat and pounced on prey aware of nothing until it roared victory in Gomez’s ears and took what it wanted. He screamed but the rain fell louder and it could not enter the sealed window. The sky he had sealed out claimed victory.
Carmel watched the figure thrash and cry. She did not answer it but stared open mouthed as the fire claimed the small, sad space. She stood waiting for the flames to notice her, their mother, and come to her. The door burst open and hands pulled her out.
Standing on the street with the other women in their tired collection of silks, lace and nylon and simple cotton, she watched the flames shooting from the roof of the building. The men who had been with the women had disappeared in various states of undress back to their lives and their explanations.
The Lost Souls' Reunion Page 4
